This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – the winner of the FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo and the Photographer of the Year, International (POYi), plus check out the Loud & Luminous 2020 Symposium and Exhibition in Canberra 5-9 March celebrating women in photography.
Last weekend I was in Brisbane for the inaugural FotoAID Conference and Print Swap Exhibition. The event raised around $28,000 for bushfire recovery! It was wonderful to be part of such a fantastic initiative and to meet some of the photographers who covered the fires including Brad Fleet, Elise Searson and Sean Davey. Heartfelt thanks to Darren Jew, Damian Caniglia and Irena Prikryl who put together an amazing event in such a short time. I was honoured to present on my PhD research into visual journalism and social change.
Also, Voice of Hope and Humanity, VOHH Foto Fest, starts next week. Check out the program. I was juror for this year and it was incredibly difficult to narrow down the selection when we received such an impressive number of entries from all over the world.
Winners:
FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo
Italian documentary photographer Antonio Faccilongo is this year’s winner of the FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo for his work HABIBI.
In Arabic, habibi means “I love you.” This body of work is, at its heart, a love story set in one of the longest and most complicated contemporary conflicts, the Israeli-Palestinian war. Palestinian prisoners’ wives have turned to smuggling sperm in order to conceive children with their husbands who are serving long-term sentences in Israeli jails.
Around 7,000 Palestinians are serving time in Israeli prisons, with nearly 1,000 facing long sentences of 20 years or more. In the past 5 years, according to the Razan Hospital in Nāblus, a city in the northern West Bank, the number of babies born through IVF exceeds 80.
Faccilongo wanted to tell a different story to the prevailing one of war and conflict, weapons and mayhem. HABIBI attempts to convey the impact of the conflict on Palestinian families by addressing the difficulties faced in preserving human dignity. In HABIBI Faccilongo reveals the realities of life and love that are hidden behind a continuous narrative of war.
HABIBI is a beautiful, sad yet hopeful story. In selecting HABIBI as the winner, FotoEvidence is once again celebrating the expansive nature of documentary photography and pushing the boundaries in publishing narratives of social injustice. The 2020 jury comprised: Philip Blenkinsop, Anne Colenbrander, Mario Cruz, Laura El-Tantawy, David Gonzalez, Jessica Lim, Lakgetho Makola, David Stuart, and Yukiko Yamagata.
The book will be published by FotoEvidence and launched in Amsterdam during the World Press Photo Festival in April.
Photo Editor: Sarah Leen
Design: Ramon Pez
Introduction: Dr. Paridah Abd Samad
Text Editor: David Stuart
Post Production: Daniele Zedda
Poem: “Revenge” by Taha Muhammad Ali
Photographer of the Year International (POYi)
Congratulations to Michael Robinson Chavez who is this year’s winner of the Photographer of the Year, International in the 77th annual Picture of the Year Awards (POYi). I first met Chavez when he was in Sydney for Head On Photo and working for The Los Angeles Times. The last time I caught up with him was in Washington where he now works for The Washington Post – yep, I was given a tour of the Post too, which was a dream for this journalist!
Robinson deservedly won POYi for several bodies of work he shot in the past year including Liberia’s Long Back Road; La Caida: Venezuelans Endure; and Siberia: Beyond the Limit. You can see all of Chavez’ winning images, plus those of the two finalists, Ricky Carioti also from The Washington Post, and Rodrigo Abd, Associated Press at the POYi.
Event:
Loud & Luminous 2020 Symposium Canberra
Hilary Wardhaugh and Mel Anderson, the brains behind Loud & Luminous have put together another stellar line up of speakers for this year’s event that celebrates women in photography. Check out the Symposium, Exhibition and Artist Talks program 5-9 March in Canberra. Congrats on putting together another great program.
Photojournalism Now 
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